Just after other people's experiences with dvos. I've had my dv social worker insisting for some time that I take one out on my ex but I'm not sure if it's even worth the time. I'm in QLD.
What sort of evidence did you use? Was it denied, accepted? Did you find the process easy to handle? Or was it retraumatising? What helped your case? If they breached the order, was the breach taken seriously?
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I think it really depends on how the final order is worded, as to how useful they are. In my case, the police took it out on my behalf after he assaulted me. I had two men step in while he was assaulting and verbally abusing me, and as soon as they were between me and him two women came over to check on me. I had my wits about me enough to ask those four people for their contact details to take with me to the police. The final order wasn’t worth the piece of paper it was printed on. Yeah he didn’t assault me again, but he was still able to verbally abuse me because of the way it was worded. I went to the police because I’d had enough of the abusive phone calls. He rang I don’t know how many times while I was talking to a policeman. The policeman ended up answering my phone and telling him to cut the crap, that it wasn’t necessary, but that was all they could do. It stopped the abuse for less than 24 hours before he started on something else.
I put it off for years, had been told time and time again by multiple people and lawyer to take an IVO. I was the same, I didn’t think it was worth the hassle. It took another serious incident for me to take one out, it was the best decision I made and I wish I had done it earlier. There were breaches and the police who recorded the breaches ripped shreds through him, and I finally had some peace.... for a little while. But I had peace. Incidents that had occurred earlier were hard to prove, however I didn’t require any proof as he made an admission at the second hearing. I had a solicitor however I didn’t use him on the day, he said if I needed him to call him, but to just use the duty solicitor on the day as it saved me a lot of money.